I have had an iPhone now, for about a year and a half, I absolutely love my iPhone and don’t see myself moving away from it anytime soon. Apple has an amazing product, but I find it somewhat limiting in some areas.

I used the iPhone un-jail-broken for over a year, and was very happy with it, but it did have some major issues that caused problems for me. After the jump, I am going to go through 3 specific programs/reasons why I decided to jailbreak.

Reason #1: iRealQuickSMS ($4.99 Cydia)

My girlfriend loves to text. We text each other probably about 100 times a day sometimes even more then that. One thing that really bugged me about the iPhone is that I had to quit an application to reply to a text. With applications becoming more and more advanced, we the user are starting to see significant startup times on some applications. One that comes to mind is Navigon Mobile Navigator ($89.99 iTunes) which takes about 45 seconds to 1 minute to startup. Well, if I am in the middle of a route, and I have a turn coming up then my girlfriend texts me, to reply I have to exit the app, reply, then reopen the application reload the route, and by that time, I missed my turn. With iRealQuickSMS, it just pops up with the message and a reply box so I can read the message type my reply and send it all without having to exit the app I am in.

Reason #2: GV Mobile ($0.00 Cydia)

I use my Google Voice number as my main business phone number, so I am dealing with Google Voice hourly. With Apple’s recent rejection of the Google Voice app, I found myself having to turn to my computer to much to make calls which is not good when I am on the road. GV Mobile allows me to make calls, send sms messages, and check voicemail all from my iPhone.

Reason #3: Backgroundr ($0.00 Cydia)

One of the things that bugs me so much about the iPhone is the lack of background apps. When I am following Navigon GPS directions, and someone calls, I don’t want to have to exit the application to answer the call or reply to a text, or browse my iPod. Backgroundr allows me to hold the home button on any application for 2 seconds then it will exit to the home screen, but the app is still running in the background. It works great, and I have not found an app it doesn’t work with yet. It is great also when you are listening to Pandora and want to play a game, or browse the internet.

There are other reasons I choose to jailbreak my iPhone, but those are the 3 main ones. In the future, I will post a list of my favorite jailbreak applications. Also, just because I have a jail-broken iPhone, doesn’t mean I am not supporting Apple or the iPhone developers, I still download and pay for apps from the App Store all the time, I just needed some additional function that Apple has forbidden in the App Store. Below are some screenshots of my current iPhone home screens.